


Perimeter

by lamardeuse



Series: Getting To Know You [12]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamardeuse/pseuds/lamardeuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series to accompany Season Two of SGA. Part Twelve: Critical Mass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perimeter

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: rating refers to overall series rating. Individual parts may carry a lower rating.

Of all the things that Rodney McKay had complained about in the course of his life, “excessive sexual intercourse” had never been one of them.  Until now.

Granted, he’d never had the _opportunity _to complain about having too much sex before, but if he’d thought about it, he never would have imagined it making the same list as “constant threat of death” and “insufficient coffee rations”.  No, sex – and the rather incredible sex he had been having with John in particular – had heretofore been a ray of sunshine in Rodney’s otherwise overcast existence.

But after about the third week of some of the best (and most frequent) sex of his life, the wheels that were constantly turning in Rodney’s head started revolving more rapidly, and pretty soon he was starting to question his apparent good fortune. 

Sometimes it really sucked to be this paranoid.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“So how was that?” John asked smugly.

Rodney managed to summon the energy to raise his head a couple of inches above the pillow.  After approximately three seconds of quality glaring, his neck muscles gave out and it fell back.

“I have a theory,” he said to the ceiling.  “Well, several, actually, but why don’t I start with the most improbable.  While you were on the hive ship, you were actually replaced by a clever clone.  You are in fact an agent of the Wraith charged with testing a new tactic against us.”

John flopped down beside him and raised a semi-interested eyebrow.  “And what tactic would that be?”

Rodney weakly turned his head to look at John.  “Destroy the most valuable mind of the enemy by sucking every one of his brain cells out through his dick.”

John stared at him for a moment, then snorted.  “You got it on the first try.  My masters cannot hope to triumph against your superior intelligence.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rodney sighed.   He rolled over until John was the one flat on his back and his body was covering John’s lithe, wiry form.  John laced his hands behind his head and grinned up at Rodney, his all-American easygoing cool firmly in place. 

The problem was that Rodney had witnessed brief moments when John’s equanimity gave way to furtive desperation; he’d seen it on John’s face a handful of times, usually when Rodney was so deep inside him that there was no more room for secrets between them.   
It was always gone before he could read it, though reading people had never been one of Rodney’s strong suits.  He doubted extra time would make a difference.

John twisted underneath him, the motion pressing his hard cock into the crease of Rodney’s right thigh.  “So what are you going to do to me now that you have me at your mercy?” John drawled lazily.

And Rodney had never been much for fantasy when he was actually getting some, but those words were almost enough to bring his dick back from the dead, because God, what he wouldn’t give for that to be true for even five minutes, for Sheppard to be helpless beneath him, compelled to tell him anything, _anything _Rodney wanted to know.

He wouldn’t even know where to start.

“Mmm, well, I don’t have the energy to both show _and _tell,” Rodney said, unknotting John’s hands from behind his head and pressing their open palms together against the mattress.

John’s eyes narrowed to slits.  “I vote for showing.”

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
All right, so maybe some of it hadn’t been so bad.  But there were other times when Rodney knew something was wrong, when John became even more distant than usual, and Rodney was left feeling stupid and slow.  He hated that sensation.  The only other person who’d managed to kindle it in him was his mother, and the fact that John didn’t mean to do it made it somehow worse.  He could understand malice and bitterness, but where his mother had been stuffed with both to the tips of her pudgy fingers, John was completely devoid of either.  It made the parallel even more maddening.

Out of deference to John’s employer, they’d always taken great pains to be discreet about their relationship, but lately John had been taking great pains to risk discovery of said relationship, to the point where Rodney was beginning to wonder if John was deliberately trying to sabotage his career.  John would look at Rodney in meetings in a way that would make Rodney’s ears turn crimson; he would place a possessive hand in the small of Rodney’s back to steer him this way or that as they walked; worst of all, various parts of his anatomy (none of them R-rated, thank God) would rub up against corresponding parts of Rodney’s in semi-public places.  And last night in the weapons room, when Rodney was cranky and sore from spending far too many hours bent over control panels with microscopic lettering, John had shown up, yanked Rodney’s pants down to his knees and—well, bent him over a control panel.  Normally, this would not have bothered him one bit, but when he had finished coming his brains out he’d realized John hadn’t locked the door.

“What were you thinking?” Rodney had demanded, hurriedly zipping himself back to some semblance of respectability.

“Relax,” John had said easily, sprawling in a chair in a posture of total unconcern.  “It’s two in the morning.  Nobody’s around.”

“There’s a security detail that patrols this area around the clock, remember?”

A flicker of something had crossed John’s face then, but was swiftly dispelled.  He shrugged and leaned back in his seat, gaze hooded like a satisfied tomcat’s.   “What can I say?  Danger is my middle name.”

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“This is all your fault, you know,” Rodney told him after the hurried briefing in Elizabeth’s office.

John scowled as they descended the stairs and started down the corridor toward the labs.  “How do you figure that?”

“You said you wanted a weekend off.  You invited the wrath of the gods.”

“I thought you were an atheist,” John muttered.

“Agnostic.  I mean metaphorical gods, of course.”  Debating with himself for a moment, Rodney leaned in close and murmured _sotto voce_, “I’m just – disappointed.  I wanted forty-eight uninterrupted hours with you.”

John stiffened, eyes darting around the nearly deserted hallway.  Rodney frowned; the nearest person was at least thirty feet away.  “Jesus, Rodney,” John breathed.  “Would you like to broadcast that on an open channel?”

Rodney felt – justifiably, in his opinion – a little put out by that.  After all, he wasn’t exactly one to spout romantic lines, and he’d thought that was one of his better efforts.  “Considering that stunt you pulled last night—”

“That wasn’t a stunt, that was…” John trailed off with a roll of a hand.

“What?  Self-sabotage?”

John scowled.  “What the hell are you implying?”

Rodney flicked a glance down the hall at the approaching Marine.  Not the place, and definitely not the time.  “Nothing,” he murmured. 

John blew out a breath and pointed to the left.  “Well, I’m going that way—”

“And I’m going that way,” Rodney answered, pointing right.  As John turned to go, he added softly,  “Hey, look on the bright side.  Same predicament, same time.”

John turned back, his expression unreadable.  “Yeah, great.  If we don’t figure this out we’ll both be dead.  That’ll be a big comfort to me as I’m being blown to bits.”

It took Rodney a full minute after John disappeared from sight to remember where he’d been headed.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
When Rodney finally returned to his quarters, he was looking forward to about fourteen solid hours of uninterrupted sleep to make up for what he’d lost over the last day and a half.  He wasn’t expecting to find John fast asleep in his bed like Goldilocks.

Which was why he jumped about five feet when he turned on the light.

John came instantly awake, sitting up hastily and looking sheepish and rumpled – well, more rumpled than usual.  And Rodney wanted to be cranky and pissed off, he really did, but he was rather astonished to discover that he seemed to have run out of defenses against a bleary-eyed, blinking John Sheppard.  His drone supply was definitely depleted, and nukes?  Forget it.

“And who’s been sleeping in my bed?” Rodney murmured, aware his tone was clearly fond and utterly unable to do anything about it. 

John’s mask descended then; he shoved aside the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed, and Rodney thought,_ fuck.  Wrong again._

“John, please don’t—” 

“Look, I—” John began, sitting on the edge of the mattress but at least making no move to get up, “I wanted to apologize.”

“What for?” Rodney asked, incredulous.

John looked at his hands.  “I know this isn’t what you signed on for.”

More doublespeak; John could give the Sphinx lessons in successful riddling.  Rodney took a deep breath and moved toward him cautiously.  “And what did I sign on for?”

“You’d know that better than me,” John replied, still not meeting his gaze.

Rodney clamped his lips over the retort that took shape automatically in his mouth.  _No, _he told himself firmly.  _For once, you are going to be the mature one._

“Can I ask you one question you’ll answer?” Rodney said softly.  “Is this your oh-so-oblique way of dumping me?”

John’s gaze finally rose and locked with his.  “No,” he said after a long moment. 

“Well,” Rodney said, several important muscle groups unknotting.  “Good.”

“I just…”  John scrubbed a hand over his face.  “Fuck, I don’t know.  I don’t know anything.”

And that surprised Rodney the way few things ever did, because if there was one thing he’d always assumed about John, it was that he’d never admit to even that much.  To say John played it close to the vest was like saying the Chicago fire was a small blaze.  He was a puzzle of vast and elegant proportions, and normally this was exactly the sort of thing Rodney loved to turn this way and that, to approach logically, to gradually pick apart until it yielded up its secrets.

He understood stress:  he’d defended theses, he’d dealt with jealous, backstabbing colleagues, he’d _saved the galaxy_ on more than one occasion.  He knew that all the crises, all the death, all the burdens John had shouldered over the past year were starting to drag him under.  He could pick John apart if he wanted to, categorize him and define him and in the final analysis summarize him neatly and succinctly.

But there would be nothing left of John when he was done.  And Rodney wanted him around for a long, long time.

Slowly, carefully, he took two more steps and sat gingerly on the bed, close to John but not quite touching.  “I’m beat,” he murmured.  “How about you?”

“Yeah,” John agreed, nodding sharply.  “Guess I should let you rest.”

Before John could shove himself off the bed, though, Rodney reached out without conscious intent and wrapped a hand around his forearm.  John looked down at the place where Rodney’s fingers gripped his flesh, then back up at Rodney’s face.

“I’ll set the alarm for five thirty,” Rodney heard himself say, a plea disguised as a promise.  The sentry who patrolled the living quarters at night always went by at a quarter after five and a quarter to six;  Rodney knew this because he’d been up that late more nights than he could count, and John would know because he set the schedule.

John’s arm tensed momentarily under Rodney’s fingers.   Rodney held his breath.

“Okay,” John said finally.  “I kind of like your bed.”

“The mattress is prescription,” Rodney said proudly, even as he knew John wasn’t talking about the mattress. 

John raised an eyebrow at him.  “Don’t get too excited.  I liked Antarctica too.”  Which was, Rodney realized, as close to a backhanded declaration of love as John could manage without the aid of massive doses of sedatives.  Biting back a smile, he stripped off just enough clothes, tossed them onto the floor and settled under the covers beside his favourite mystery.

“You tell Zelenka that paint only washes off with hydrogen peroxide?” John asked as he rolled away from Rodney and settled into a relaxed fetal position.

Rodney blinked. 

“Rodney…”

“I’ll tell him in the morning,” Rodney huffed.  “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” John retorted.  His hand reached back and pinched Rodney’s solid thigh before splaying over it possessively and hauling it into alignment with his own.  “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

Rodney thought about the casual look on John’s face when he’d nodded to Ronon, releasing the lion from the cage with the same expression he might use to order a hamburger. 

_Same here,_ he thought, settling against John’s back, fitting his forehead to the barrier of John’s shoulder blade, feeling the tautness gradually yield to something approximating peace.

**Author's Note:**

> First published January 2006.


End file.
